


Wings of a Worthless God

by Tien



Category: Homestuck
Genre: M/M, Veilstuck
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2015-09-25
Updated: 2015-09-25
Packaged: 2018-04-23 07:34:55
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,951
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4868546
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Tien/pseuds/Tien
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Karkat ascends to Godtier but discovers his "perfect" form is far from what he had hoped.<br/>He's forced to cripple himself and hide his status from his friends to avoid the repercussions he's feared all his life. </p>
<p>Things change when he meets John, the two strike up a friendship and a deep layer of trust. Maybe even enough to convince Karkat to tell the truth to everyone he cares about. </p>
<p>This is a reboot of an old story of mine. It's veilstuck because everyone was writing veilstuck in the golden era of Homestuck.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Wings of a Worthless God

> Godtier: This is the term for the final level a player can attain in sBURB. Like the name implies it is a god like status, though ascertaining whether or not the player is actually a god is difficult. While the player’s aspect and power is enhanced through reaching godtier, it is not the only way to gain mastery of the assigned aspect. When a player reaches godtier it often alters one’s body to that of the image of perfection that the species attaining it has. This can even include the addition of appendages like wings. This final level is challenging to reach, because in order to ascend the player must first die on their “quest bed” an object located on the players assigned world. The player must either die by their own hand, or another’s while on the bed, and the player must have a dreamself that has not died. Other ways to ascend are still being looked into by myself. There is a secondary quest bed located at the center of the moon where the player’s dreamself wakes. This secondary quest bed might hold another way to ascend, but I’ll have to do some more research. I hope this information helps anyone still checking the web for walkthroughs.-Rose Lalonde 

A thick, sluggish, gurgling sound surrounded a troll poised at the top of an outcropping of jagged black rocks. He stood with his back to the wind, the sharp metallic smell of blood seeped in and out of his nose. His eyes focused on an entrance to a tunnel on another patch of rocks. The small islands were black dots against a red ocean and hazy purple sky. Blood lapped lazily against the rocks and the world pulsed with the heartbeats of hundreds of living stones. The world was alive. 

The troll grimaced and curled his lips at the sight of his planet. He was thoroughly convinced that everything he saw before him was created to spite him. It made him sick. There was a brief pause in his actions where he stood motionless, his eyes burning with hatred, before he leapt from the rock and plunged into the depths of the tunnel.

In the dark he felt mildly comforted. His eyes glowed faintly in the shadows as he descended the smooth staircase. When he reached the bottom he found words written in a script only he could read. “Welcome Karkat Vantas, Knight of Blood. Here lies your final challenge as well as your final resting place.” He growled and dragged sharp claws down the words. “Final resting place my ass,” he snarled. There was only one reason he was here, one of the final bosses of his world lay in wait within these chambers. He was going to find it, kill it, and gain his final level. Then he could leave this disgusting planet and never come back.

A fork in the path presented Karkat with his first choice; he took to the left side which led to a staircase that spiraled up instead of down. At the base he hesitated, was this right way to go? After traveling so far down he didn’t believe that the boss would be on an upper floor. “Why the hell would they have me walk all the way down here just to climb up more godforsaken stairs?” He took a step back and glanced behind him. An eerie feeling swept through him and chilled him to the bone. Something wasn’t right. 

He had expected this to be a difficult dungeon, one filled with high level imps and dangerous traps. But so far the journey had been easy. There were no signs of enemies anywhere and the halls had been left untouched. Karkat feared that maybe he had traveled to the wrong cavern and this was all for nothing. Or perhaps the final boss was so taxing on a player’s strength that they would need all of it just to survive? 

Karkat backtracked to the fork and walked a ways down the right path. It kept going for what seemed like ages to the troll, and it could have been. The winding path seemed to distort any feeling of time. He noticed that the ground sloped downward ever so slightly and the floor was harder to see. Even with eyes designed to see at night Karkat was having trouble confidently putting his feet down. This felt more like the correct path. Still, there were no imps, not even the old scent of an enemy could be found. Just an endless dark tunnel and the choking smell of blood. 

“What the fuck?” He muttered under his breath. This was by far the most bizarre dungeon he had been in, and that’s including the ones on the Land of Brains and Fire. There was a heartbeat that Karkat heard when he entered the tunnel. It was different from the normal background noise of beating hearts that he had grown used to. This one was stronger; and it resonated within the troll and pushed him further down the tunnel. The steady thumping synched with his heart and Karkat found it hard to differentiate the beat of the cave from his own blood roaring in his ears. 

A bit of light began to filter through the inky darkness. It was a red glow so soft that he had troubles deciding if it were real or a trick his eyes were playing on him. His grip on his sickles tightened. The glow grew stronger and stronger with each step he took. When the hallway opened up Karkat found himself in a cavern so massive the ceiling and opposite side were shrouded in shadow. In the center, suspended high in the air was a glowing heart. It was the same one that beat in time with his own. Long tendrils held the heart in place. Where they came from the troll had no clue. 

For a long time he stood at the entrance of the tunnel, unwilling to move closer. This place straddled the line of amazing and dangerous too well. The way the heart beat so strongly and loudly made Karkat wonder if it was very center of his planet. Of course that would be outlandish, he walked a long ways, but surely not that far? It captivated him. His eyes were drawn to it, and only it. The rest of the large room was left largely uninspected and ignored. 

Each beat bore into Karkat. He could feel his body pulse with it. When he took the first steps forward into the cavern they were not entirely his own. His mind was moving on autopilot and he hardly registered placing his hand on the organ. It was warm, moist, soft and moved under his hand. Everything became nothing in that moment. The troll felt unbelievably calm, like a wave of warm water washed over him. It was just his mind and the never-ending, steady rhythm of heartbeats. 

Beneath his feet cracks in the stone rippled and the same fleshy tendrils poked their way through. They gently wrapped around Karkat’s legs, winding their way up to his thighs. Karkat didn’t notice, if he had he didn’t have any reaction. His eyes were blank and dully reflected the red glow of the heart. The tendrils moved farther up his body until they reached his chest. Karkat’s mind was overwhelmed by the feeling of the heart beating inside him that it failed to react to the sting of the fleshy probes entering just below his rib cage. 

The warmth spread throughout his body and sapped his will. 

His grip loosened on the sickle he had clenched in his hand. It fell to the floor with a clang that seemed to shatter the trance he was in. Karkat’s ears perked and his eyes sharpened. All at once nerves started firing and alerting the brain to the fleshy invasion. Instantly claws shredded the tendrils that wormed their way under his skin and the sickle made quick work of the ones holding his legs down. He took a few shaky steps back and drew in a breath or two. 

“What the fuck was that?” 

The heart shuddered and jerked sending shockwaves through the fleshy ties holding it in place. It rocked the entire cavern with its thrashing. Karkat was no longer filled with awe of the organ but fear. He continued to take steps back when more flesh erupted from the floor and threatened to attach themselves to the troll a second time. He growled and headed for the exit only to stop when he spotted more text on the wall. 

It was written not in the harsh symbols of Alternian but in a language so complex and foreign that it could be understood only by one player. It was a language created just for him. “The puppet knight will protect the heart if his own beats lesser,” Karkat read aloud. “Flee or hold your ground, kill or defend, the choice is yours but also not. A god of blood needs more than resolve to ascend.”He glared at the wall, angered by the stupid riddles. “What the hell does any of this mean?” 

The tendrils moved silently along the cave floor and threatened to grab Karkat. “So what do I do?” He said spinning back around to face the heart. “Kill it? Is this the boss?” He side stepped the tendrils and walked around the edge of the room. 

He didn’t know what he expected, the room to answer him? He almost laughed at his stupidity. Here he was, in the heart of the dungeon and he was supposed to be the final one and he was supposed to fight a goddamn heart? Maybe the real boss is upstairs and this is some bonus boss, or worse the wrong thing to fight. But that didn’t make any sense to him, the writing on the wall clearly told him he had to make a choice. Either he killed the heart or he didn’t. The option where he didn’t seemed like the worse of the two. He didn’t like the way the tendrils reached for him, it made it sound like the “puppet knight” part of the writing could become literal. 

Karkat switched out his sickles, instead of the Homes Smell Ya Later he chose the Regisickles; they had a much higher attack stat and would do far more damage than his other default weapon. Sure they were more fragile, but he didn’t think this battle would last very long.

Surprisingly the heart made the first move. One the tendrils reached up out of the rock and flung itself at Karkat. It hit the wall with a wet smack. Karkat continued to run around the room, sticking close to the wall and learning the strike patterns of the heart. He didn’t know if it had a brain, but if it did, it wasn’t using it. It attacked in a very predictable pattern, in step with the heartbeats. Every tenth beat was a strike. 

It was almost like he was dancing with the blood beneath his skin. 

Karkat dodged an attack and ran alongside the tentacle. Quickly he jumped up on top of it and leapt onto the heart. It started to thrash wildly almost throwing the troll off. He held on, the blades sinking deep into the flesh. He yanked one free and cut at the mass of muscle holding the heart up in the air. The sickle went through a chunk of it before getting stuck. He pulled it free but the effort made him lose his grip on the other sickle and he fell to the floor. 

He had to claw off small tendrils that instantly latched onto his skin and tried to burrow in. The heart started to rock back and forth violently after it had been wounded. Blood spewed from the wound and coated the floor and troll in red. Karkat got to his feet and charged again, this time he was able to get a firmer hand hold on the organ. The drumming of the heart was so loud that it threatened to overwhelm him. His sickle plunged in deep in an attempt to silence it. 

Thankfully the heart couldn’t scream, but it did thrash harder and faster. The metal tore through the top and Karkat rode the heart to the floor where he yanked both sickles free and hacked at the bottom cords. Once severed the heart gave a few final convulsions before going still. 

Silence filled the room.

Deep silence that filled every part of Karkat, going deeper than the heartbeat had. It was strange, he felt like weeping. The heart lay still in the center of the room. There was no fanfare or indication that the victory was truly his. He turned his attention back to the message carved in the wall. No matter how many times he read it he came to the same conclusion. Either he had to kill the heart or the heart was going to use him. Though, Karkat realized that there was a third option he hadn’t thought of. He could have ran back out and left the heart alone beating in the central chamber. If didn’t have to kill it. But he did, and he wasn’t sure what that meant for him.

While he paced the room looking for answers he noticed a few ceiling tiles had fallen to the floor. Curiously Karkat looked up and discovered that under the rock and tile there appeared to be flesh. It reminded him of the brain caves on Sollux’s land. Something dripped on his face while he looked up at the flesh. It wasn’t water, but more blood. The same blood that pulsed through the heart and made up the rivers and lakes of the planet. What started as a few drops quickly turned into a steady stream. Karkat backed up, he didn’t like where this was going. 

The floor beneath Karkat bucked as the whole room seemed to shudder and shake. Tiles started falling from the ceiling and walls; everything seemed to be caving in. Karkat didn’t need any more encouragement to start running. He retreated back up the dark hall and kept running until he came to the entrance. He bypassed the way he first entered and instead ran for the staircase leading to the unexplored area of the dungeon. The walls weren’t thrashing this far up; he assumed it was more stable the further he got from the basement. 

At the top of the stairwell Karkat entered a large domed room. He had stopped in his tracks and took it all in. Saying it was breathtaking was an understatement. There were dark black rock columns that stretched up towards the sky. They held the roof in place. From what Karkat could tell, the roof was made of a thin fleshy membrane that was connected to the pillars and spread out over the whole room. It was just thin enough to let light into the chamber, but the light was filtered and red. The black rocks made up the paneling on the walls too. They stopped five stories up and the thicker flesh from before took over as the main wall material. Karkat wasn’t sure what this room was for, but it had to be important. 

He walked around the room and tried to take it all in. There wasn’t much décor, the room offered very little in clues about what to do. At one end he found a large stone circle with the symbol for his aspect carved in the center. The symbol was filled in with a red rock polished smooth and reflective. When Karkat jumped up onto the stone circle he could see himself looking back up from the symbol. On the wall above the circle was another set of carvings. 

Once again they were in the language only he could read. It read, “The Hero of Blood must die upon the stone to awake a god.” 

“What the fuck? So I’m supposed to kill myself? And what?” Karkat held his arms out wide. “Pray that I come back a god? This is bullshit! I’m not going to die like that, this whole place is stupid.” 

There was a tremor that ran through the building and almost made Karkat lose his footing. “The fuck?” He hopped off the stone slab and started back for the entrance. However before he could make it more than halfway across the room everything rocked again. The floor seemed to shift as the walls jerked. Karkat could hear stone cracking and shifting all around him. “Oh shit, oh shit, oh fucking shit!” The repercussions of killing the heart were starting to reach him all the way up here. He had to get out, and fast. 

The floor heaved again and he was tossed to the side. The pillar he rested against started to fall, like it was made of paper. He backed away and watched in horror as it took out another pillar that fell across the exit. To Karkat’s horror the large black stones were too heavy to move and the gap they left at the top was far too small to fit through. 

Karkat eyed the ceiling and came up with a plan. If he could reach the thin membrane at the top he could slice through it and escape through the roof. It was the only option he had left. He bolted for the stone slab and climbed on top of it. From there he had access to the stone rocks that made up the walls. The violent jerking of the building had caused several of the stones to come loose already. He could see the soft flesh of the wall underneath them. 

Carefully he started to climb the wall, using the gaps in the rocks as hand and foot holds. It was slow going, and every time the walls trembled he had to hold on and pray nothing fell loose. Trolls were given sharp claws and thick skin for survival and they came in handy when he was scaling the wall. The tough surface of the stones didn’t bother his hands and his claws were able to sink into the flesh whenever possible. Several times he had to stop to catch his breath and plan out his next move. The gaps in the rock were becoming scarcer the further he progressed.

Eventually the wall shook again and more stones split and fell away. The one Karkat was holding onto seemed to fall away from the wall and took him with it. Thinking fast he pulled out a sickle and plunged it deep into the rock. It made a horrible screeching sound as the metal ground itself against the rock. But it slowed down his fall enough where he grab a hold of another rock with his free hand. From there he took in a few shaken breaths. He looked down to see the rock smash on the floor below. A fall from this height could kill him. Trolls were strong, but they could still shatter bones. He swallowed and kept moving up. When he had passed above the rock line things became much easier.

The flesh was a softer material that Karkat could scale with ease. He took a moment to take off his shoes and let them fall to the floor. Using the sharp talons on his hands and feet he could start to climb at a much faster pace. The wall smelled of copper and he knew he’d be digging flesh out from under his nails for days, but it was worth it. His idea was working. Just a few more feet and he’d be at the membrane. He pulled out his sickle and held it firmly between his teeth. When he finally touched the roof he paused to orientate himself in a better position. 

It was almost like the room could feel that Karkat was about to escape, because the whole thing rocked one more time. Karkat held on firmly to the flesh, he didn’t dare let go. Then something horrible started to happen. He could feel the flesh under his claws start to give and sag. “No,” he growled between his sickle. “No…” He took one hand off of the flesh wall and raised his weapon high. It easily sliced through the membrane and Karkat got a blast of fresh air before the world around him shook again. 

His sickle was ripped from his hand and he watched it slide down the membrane on the opposite side. He stuck his arm through the small hole he tore through but it wasn’t enough to give him any support or help. His feet fell out from under him and he was left dangling by just a clawful of flesh and his arm through the roof. Karkat was so close; he couldn’t believe he was going to fail moments before victory. 

When he looked down below he saw the stone circle, it was positioned like a hand ready to catch him. But he knew that from this height it wouldn’t save him. The room gave one final shake and the flesh he was gripping fell away from the wall. Karkat’s single arm couldn’t hold his weight and with nothing to hold onto he fell. 

Karkat Vantas didn’t feel the initial impact as he hit the stone circle below him. His spine was severed instantly and all feeling slipped away. His eyes were still sending information to his brain that was running damage control at maximum capacity. He watched the room fall apart around him. Giant stone pillars fell and the roof seemed to deflate and fall in. The walls shook and rocks were ejected from their surface. The last thing Karkat saw was a glimpse of the sky and the hazy clouds that covered his planet. A thick stone shard impaled his chest and killed him seconds later. His blood pooled on the stone beneath him and penetrated deeply into the cracks. 

\---

Somewhere on Skaia four pillars started to glow. They surrounded a stone circle that was identical to the one that Karkat’s corpse was lying on under a mountain of rubble on his home planet. In the center of the stone was another body, this one was not dead, and was dressed in the golden garb of Prospit. A wound began to spread across this sleeping dreamers’ body. A deep chest wound started bleeding out. Karkat Vantas was dying in two places at once. 

Back on the Land of Pulse and Haze a similar event was being mirrored. Thousands of dragonflies gathered around the covered ruins of the stone slab. Even though most of the building was destroyed, four pillars stood erect and glowing. Their intensity rose at the same time as their counterpart on Skaia. 

As Karkat’s last drops of life bled from his body his consciousness was transferred. It nestled itself inside the dying dreamer and started rebooting the troll’s life. The blood started to vanish as the body was lifted into the air. A bright glow enveloped the body as the lights of the pillars grew ever brighter. The symbol of the hero of blood appeared over the pillars as Karkat was lifted even higher. 

The clothes he was wearing vanished and were replaced by new ones. A long brown cape attached to a hood hung from his neck as a silken brown shirt appeared over his chest. The golden pants of his dreamself were switched out for ones made of dark brown. The blood symbol blazed brightly on the shirt before the lights diminished in intensity. 

Karkat Vantas had successfully become a god. 

**Author's Note:**

> Hey everyone, thanks for reading, first off.  
> Second, I'd really like to know what people think of this story.  
> On my DA account this was already an established story, but this is the first time it's appearing on my AO3. Critique would always be lovely.  
> If you had stumbled across this on DA and are now finding it here, there's some things you've probably noticed. The first being that the ending here wasn't the same as the ending of the old version. That's because I'm trying to streamline this fic a bit better. Instead of shoving the godtier realization portion at the end of this chapter, I'm going to put whole thing in one chapter on its own. That way I can go into more detail and give myself more time to develop certain parts.


End file.
